The Expert Podcast

There was a whole lot going on with the new and used electric vehicle market and EV in general. One of the biggest things is overcoming the perceived obstacle of charging stations. One of the reasons that electric vehicles are not being adopted as quickly as maybe buyers, sellers, and even the government wants to is because of the perceived what's called range anxiety. So if you have an electric vehicle it's not as simple as popping into a gas station spending a minute or two filling up your tank and driving on with another tank full of gas and the two or three or 400 miles worth of range associated with it. An electric vehicle even at the highest end has 200 miles of range and in order to refill that range may take you hours of charging.

So towards that end there are forces at work trying to get charging stations set up. So there's Department of Transportation has allocated 615 million for charging station networks. The federal government has added 5 billion to EV chargers but it seems like they're trying to skip interstate rest stops and we'll talk about why. Adding charges to rest areas is something that's important to look at and then what about in rural areas right electric vehicle chargers in rural areas and last but not least we're going to take a look at if you're going to put a home charging station making sure that your home insurance and the construction is something that benefits you doesn't create a liability.

So here's an article from a legal journal that talks about how the infrastructure plan for the national electric infrastructure vehicle formula move forward with having a state by state funding plan from the D.O.T for electric vehicles and the plan has to include how the state's D.O.T is going to coordinate with the energy department the electrical grid other stakeholder groups for example the public labor organizations and underserved communities making sure that it doesn't adversely affect anybody how the plan supports affordable and efficient national network even though it's done at the state level and contracting with the private sector to make sure that these charging stations are put in the correct locations.

One of the factors in doing this is making sure that there's planning in strategically locating this infrastructure making sure the distance between them should be less than 50 miles apart so nobody has to go more than 50 miles and within a mile from the interstate or highway exit and this gets this gets into the rest area question that we'll talk about momentarily. What's the reliability of that power making sure that what if the power goes out what if there's a electrical outage um what's the pricing of that making sure that these charging stations where they're placed don't put an undue burden on the electrical grid proximity to off highway travel centers and that's something that is related where there's other resources at that location beyond just charging is there food is there um hotels are there other travel um resources or locations located in conjunction with it rural core quarters so if you're out in the boonies you don't want to be running out your battery just because you're not near a highway.

Operation and maintenance of these facilities who's going to take care of them is there going to be somebody on site you know at a gas station there's gas station attendants sitting there the whole time um what happens with these charging stations what if the fuse blows what if there's damage what if there's some type of malfunction how is that handled if there's not somebody right there sure you can have remote monitoring to make sure that the the government or whoever's running these is aware that there's a problem but then who's going to fix it how far away is a repair person to fix the problem maybe reset a breaker something simple um public and private investment coordination some of these are going to be pay for charging some are going to be free and then meeting the market demands you know planning on how many electric vehicles are going to be on the road and having the network of charging stations match that right both regular charging and fast chargers.

They want to have at least four ports at a location doesn't seem like a lot you know when you go to a gas station every gas station has more than four gas pumps four nozzles and a gas pump you can fill up in five or ten minutes at the most having four at a charging station might be a little bit on the low side if you have 10 cars backed up that needs to charge up and each chart car takes a few hours how's that going to work out right and then they talk about all the funds it goes state by state how many millions of dollars go to each state and what the percentage is of that particular budget.

So here's the national plan the big news in this is it skips interstate rest stops why is that why wouldn't you want to have a charging station at a rest stop right here's an example of a rest stop on the interstate this happens to be in florida the reason why is because in 1956 they passed a law that limits commerce at highway rest areas why did they do that well when they built the interstate highway system the local roads that used to be the main travel areas had businesses on those roads gas stations motels restaurants all the different services on those roads and those enterprises those companies were worried well if everybody's on the highway how are we going to make any money if they can get fuel food on the highway if there's a rest stop on the highway why is somebody going to get off an exit ramp to go to mcdonald's if they can just pop off in the rest area get some food and go on their way so in order to make sure that the existing businesses weren't going to have financial problems they passed a law that has limited commerce on the rest areas that are on the highway pull-off.

Well that's going to be a problem for drivers of electric vehicles because they will have to exit the highway if they're going to rely on that this new charging system right well you have to exit the highway now anyways for fuel although some rest areas either because they were grandfathered in before 1956 or had other um reasons for allowing this have fuel available new jersey turnpike florida turnpike a couple of good examples even vending machines are an exception at rest stop so you're lucky if you have a vending machine so instead of having it in the rest area the new law says as close to the highway system as possible no more than one mile from an exit well that's pretty reasonable but you're not going to be able to just pull off into one of these rest stops and get it um.

There's a push to change that law EV groups and lawmakers say the rest area restriction could hurt acceptance of electric vehicles what does that tell you well obviously it's important to lawmakers that they want to have acceptance of electric vehicles you can decide for yourself why the lawmakers want this to happen but they do so much so that they're willing to change a 70-year-old law that protects businesses in rural areas or even in urban areas off the highway they're willing to put that at risk to get more acceptance of electric vehicles we'll leave it to you to figure out why they might want to do that.

The restriction has the potential to force charging infrastructure further off the travel corridor limiting solution for planners increasing range requirements for vehicles and potentially inconveniencing drivers well range requirements aren't really going to be that much if it's within a mile of the highway then it's not going to affect the range it's an inconvenience yes but that inconvenience already exists because you have to get off the highway to get gas but it does limit solutions for planners who are the planners the planners are the government and the EV companies the infrastructure bill had language to permit car charging in rest areas but that language didn't make it into the final law because of the previous law and there's a lot of energy behind this um not only do they want to add charges but they want to add restaurants and other services well that only makes sense if they want to add chargers it's not like popping in for gas where you can just fill up in two minutes you're going to be there for hours so you're going to have to have restaurants and other services so this is a lot of pressure to change that law and it's going to create a lot of um opportunity to develop these look at this rest stop here you've seen them off the side of the road putting in restaurants putting in food and who's going to be benefiting from that who can be the vendors for that.

Electric fast chargers need to be in a greater variety of places easily accessed from highways like gas stations right it seems like that major gas stations installing these would solve it but um maybe it wouldn't be enough high-speed chargers need to be installed in a significant numbers of highway rest areas they're quickly excess as opposed to getting off the highway and going through a lot of roads they do have rest restrooms and water and place to walk around but they don't have food they don't have other vendings so there's a big push for this charging system exception to the federal law to happen keep your eyes peeled on that.
What about rural areas there's a couple startups that are trying to expand EV charging in rural areas where there's no highways in the back roads places like route 66 because people drive in rural areas too and if everything's going to be EV you have to have coverage for that EV charging is going to accelerate tremendously but in the rural areas it's harder to coordinate that because there's a big variety of companies trying to create a charging network in less populous areas without filling those voids consumers will shy away from buying electric vehicles because if you go on a road trip you're not on the highway the whole time you're not on an interstate the whole time you're sometimes on back road sometimes you want to go visit some tourist attraction or connect from one interstate to another and unless you have confidence that you can recharge your EV in a safe area it's not going to be a problem that's something else we'll talk about in other videos what's the safety risk factor you know if you go into a gas station you know you're there for a few minutes and you leave if there's a place where it's known that a person has to be stopped with their vehicle disabled for an hour hour and a half is that going to attract any kind of crime is that going to attract risk to that area.

So a single fast charger can cost 100 grand so how is it going to be that you're going to have these all over rural areas and who's going to man them who's going to be operating them he's going to be keeping an eye on him make sure they don't break.

Last but not least what about in your house you can actually install a charger in your house as you might have been aware of but you might need to get more insurance on that installation because you're installing a 220 high voltage system into your house in fact the installation might lower your insurance if you do it correctly because you may have to upgrade your panel which could give you a credit the EV itself the vehicle is more expensive to insure the car insurance but your premium might actually go down on your home insurance because insurers don't look at your usage but if you upgrade your electrical system to handle EV charging you could see your rates decrease especially homeowners with older houses right.

So there's a lot of factors going into the adoption of electric vehicles charging is the biggest factor especially now where there's more options for you to buy an electric vehicle there's more new cars available and used cars are starting to come on the market but charging is still the biggest reason people are concerned and these stories about the federal plan to make a network rest area exceptions rural areas and home chargers over time we'll all have future developments in what are the rules what are the laws how are they supported how are they incentivized and that may be the thing that helps faster adoption of electric vehicles.